Only an Irish Girl Part 11

The sun has set as she enters the gates, and a mist which has crept up from the river makes the wide empty s.p.a.ce on her left, as she walks up toward the house, look more like a lake than solid earth.

She has left the ruins behind her, not without a nervous s.h.i.+ver in pa.s.sing, when the sound of a step, falling lightly but regularly on the strip of gra.s.s by the side of the drive, arrests her attention and sets her heart beating rapidly.

"It is all my own foolish fancy," she says to herself, and walks faster.

The step follows faster too. She stops, and instantly that light footfall is silent. Not a creature is to be seen. The old ruins rise grim and bare between her and the pale evening sky, but not a sound comes from them.

"It must have been my own fancy," she tells herself, and, rea.s.sured, starts forward almost at a run.

But listen! Again the step sounds behind her; more distant and far less rapid than her own, but clear and unmistakable. Her heart gives a great throb, the color dies out of her cheeks, and by the time she reaches her own door she feels ready to fall from haste and fear.

The old butler is crossing the hall and he looks at her curiously.

"Have you seen anything to startle you, Miss Honor?" he says at last.

"No; I have seen nothing. Why do you ask?" Not for worlds would she own to any one the ghostly fears that shook her out there in the dusky avenue, with the sound of those following steps in her ears.

"Well," adds the butler, "one of the girls has just come in, miss, in a state of great fright, and says that she saw the old abbot himself at the corner of the avenue, watching the house for all the world as if it held some treasure of his own."

"Nonsense!" Honor says, turning suddenly pale, even in the lighted hall. "I hope these silly tales are not going to begin again. Your master will be very displeased if they come to his ears."

As she enters the sitting-room she sees that her father is not alone.

A tall man is standing on the rug before the fire, talking with much animation. It is Brian Beresford.

"I have taken the liberty of invading you without even an invitation,"

he says, coming forward with outstretched hand.

"And you are welcome," the girl answers softly. "Besides, your last invasion was so well timed, we may well forgive this one."

"Ah," he says, smiling gravely, "that was a rough sort of invasion! I hope I shall never have to attack Donaghmore in that fas.h.i.+on again."

"I hope not indeed!" Honor agrees promptly. "I don't think I could live through another night like that."

"Oh, yes, you could--through a dozen such, if necessary. I quite admired your bravery. I never saw a young lady so cool under fire before."

She blushes as she listens; her heart thrills with a half-reluctant pride at his praise.

"What has come to me," she says to herself crossly, "that I can't look at the man without blus.h.i.+ng? It's time I had more sense."

"I have come to stay a day or two," he tells them.

A week pa.s.ses, however, and he does not go away. To Honor it is a week of very mixed sensations. She has never before known any one like this stolid Englishman, who under all his composure hides a pa.s.sion so fiery, a will so strong.

On his part he is very grave and gentle. Not once does a word of love pa.s.s his lips; and she is glad of it, for she is in no mood to think of love or lovers.

"It would be horrible to think of such things," she tells herself, "while poor Power Magill is wandering in homeless misery."

She is thinking of him to-night as she looks out at the moonlight, lying chill and white on the gra.s.s and the bare flower-beds.

"Where is he now?" she asks herself with a s.h.i.+vering sigh, as she listens to the restless creak and sough of the trees. It is a question she is asking continually; but who can answer it?

He may be lying dead on some bare hillside, or at the bottom of some dark gorge in the mountains.

From the drawing-room window she can see across to the drive. Some one is coming slowly toward the house--a girl, little more than a child, with an old cloak flung over her head--country fas.h.i.+on. Honor watches her, and wonders which of the village people have been brave enough to pa.s.s the ruins of Donaghmore at this hour.

The girl comes straight on to the window at which Honor is still standing. When she is quite close she opens her cloak and holds out a letter--not a bulky letter, a mere sc.r.a.p, closely twisted; and, without a second thought, Honor raises the window and takes it out of her hand.

"Who has sent it, Nora?"--for she recognizes the child now that she sees her face.

But Nora only shakes her head and hurries away, pa.s.sing over the moonlit gra.s.s like the mere shadow of a girl.

The gentlemen are stirring in the dining-room now; she can hear their chairs being set back, and her father's voice as he opens the door for their guest.

There is not a moment to be lost if she is to read her letter in secret, and instinctively she feels that it is meant for no eyes but her own. Untwisting it rapidly, she spreads it out and reads:

"Will you venture to the old ruins at dusk to-morrow, to see one who needs your forgiveness, even if you must refuse him your pity? P. M."

As she reads the tears rush into her eyes, half blinding her; the sorrowful pleading words grow dim and indistinct.

"How he must have suffered," she says to herself, "to have changed like this!" Masterful Power, who used always to take obedience for granted!

There is something pitiful in it that goes straight to the tender woman's heart, loyal to its old traditions.

As she was putting the paper into the bosom of her dress, the drawing-room door opens, and Brian Beresford enters, followed by her father. Brian's eyes at once seek her where she stands beside the open window, her fingers playing nervously with the tell-tale sc.r.a.p of paper.

His face darkens at once, and she knows that he has seen and understood.

CHAPTER IX.

Never has time pa.s.sed so slowly to Honor Blake. All the morning she goes about her work with a listless preoccupied air that could not fail to attract attention if there were any one to heed the girl or her moods.

Perhaps Brian Beresford heeds them; but Honor never gives a thought to him. She would be glad if he would go away and leave her to herself; but since he makes no such offer, she puts up with him.

And now, in the late afternoon, she sits down at the piano, more to pa.s.s the time than to amuse their guest. In truth, as she plays she forgets him altogether. The music, now low and sweet, now wild and martial, soothes her and brings back some of her lost nerve.

Brian Beresford, looking and listening, frowns, and then sighs. She is an enigma to him, this stately, contradictory Irish girl, with her moods and her prejudices, and, above all, her reserve. He has met no one quite like her. The women of his world are of a totally different type--he can understand them easily; but Honor he cannot understand.

He feels his heart soften as he looks at her. He is proud, and it has jarred upon his pride terribly that a man like Power Magill should have been preferred to him.

"And the chances are, now the fellow is in disgrace, she will cling to him all the closer," he says to himself bitterly. He does not care to own it, but in his heart he is savagely jealous of Power Magill.

Very softly is Honor playing now--a sort of dirge or lament for the chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her own heart and the anxious dread that is making every breath a torture to her.

"What if he should be taken to-night?" she is saying to herself. "How do we know that that child is to be trusted? How dare he trust any one when there is such a heavy reward out for him--poor Power?"